Lessig in the MIT Technology Review

This is mostly a redux of similar writing by Lessig lately, but it's cool to see it in the Tech Review which probably hits a different set of eyeballs than Slashdot and Groklaw.

There's a rebuttal and a rebuttal to the rebuttal. Epstein maybe does a better job than some market apologists, but really just props up the status quo for no clear reason, especially with his section on buying Microsoft Office for $500 and that being such a compelling benefit to productivity to more than offset the cost.

Personally that is a huge issue to me (and the tangential issue of why people supposedly can't yet productively use OpenOffice, which the press consistently portrays as seriously defficient). I know how to use a word processor. I started on AppleWorks on an Apple ][, moved on over time through WordPerfect on Netware and DOS, various Microsoft, Lotus and now open productivity applications. Aside from embedded images, AppleWorks was capable everything twenty years ago for which I use office apps today. Maybe I had to stick in a separate floppy to launch the spell checker and turn over that floppy for the actual spell check, but still. It worked and well considering the option of writing things by hand or on a typewriter...that difference was the primary difference in productivity.

I'm not sure what that old AppleWorks version would cost today given inflation and maybe in constant currency Microsoft Office is cheaper. But it sure seems like the 99% of features that most users rely on should now be commodity. Is that extra 1% worth the $500? And are those features truly ones that significantly matter to productivity? I say no.